Goodbye 2012

The happy chaos that is Christmas and New Years is behind us and we are trying to settle back into a normal routine. I hope your Christmas was as nice as ours, we had lots of family over, lots of great food and felt so much love surrounding us. We were spoiled by family and friends, and are so thankful for the ones we have, and remembered the ones we lost.

Marley had a absolute blast, she did really well with the chaos and running around, thankfully. There were more presents than she knows what to do with, and she has already started helping me pick some of her older ones to donate to kids in need. We went to Disney On Ice: Worlds Of Fantasy and she was so excited, of course it made me cry.

I surprised Jason with a all-inclusive trip for the three of us, to Mexico, so we are trying to prepare for that. We will be in the Mayan Riviera from January 8th, to the 15th, and I am SO looking forward to some down, relax time in the sun with my little family. This will be our first trip of this kind with Marley, and will be a different one for sure, but we are extremely excited about it. Jason’s face when he opened the box containing the surprise? Priceless. I can’t believe I was able to keep it a secret from him for so long, and was able to wait until Christmas morning to give it to him. Totally worth it.

As for me, I am feeling pretty great. Slightly nervous about how big this belly is going to be by mid-April, but I’m crossing my fingers that things will plateau a little bit now. By the end of most days, I am terribly achy and full of belly pressure, but I am able to grin and bear it. Aside from the large feeling, I am fantastic. Not nearly as tired as I have been, no real food aversions and I had more energy. That being said, I am just starting to feel like I can dress myself in a presentable manner, and feel really comfortable in my skin. I’ll ignore the huge feeling for now and rock a bathing suit (maybe even a bikini!) while we are in Mexico.

Looking back on this last year, it has been full of transformations and growth, no pun intended. Watching Marley grow into a beautiful, responsible, sweet little girl has been a absolute pleasure, that I continue to be thankful for. Both Jason and I have grown tremendously, spirituality, emotionally and… uh… physically. I am proud of how far we have both come, the steps we have taken to achieve that growth, and hope it continues for 2013. We are looking forward to becoming a family of four.

I put together a few collages of some of my favorite pictures from this year, although there are some missing, and not all of them were happy, they were the moments that shaped who we are today, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.